>>>>Jane Through The Seasons

Cheers to the blessing that is & was 2016! If 2017 finds you and me breathing, I pray it may be to us that which we need to be more loving and laughing more. XX Jane

it is really the 'good' emphasis tags. the 'bye,' our nods in reflection's haze: you have me altered: inside tuned more;  leaving revelations within self,  to unfurl in time under guide of  that true and old germinating song, luck. thank you for everything. - j

A Lot to Digest by Hafiz* There is a place between knowing you are priceless and at the same time recognizing you are what is stepped over in a street after a horse just left what they do in those pretty brown clumps, of useful organic matter. Somewhere between those poles, live if you can. For anywhere else really won't suit you or serve a special work that comes to those who have achieved real equilibrium, a synchronistic balance with all, all you have ever known. This may sound like a lot to digest: suns are waiting to emanate from your pores, you will have to factor that in someday, I will help you. There is a place between knowing you are priceless and... --- *From A Year With Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky

a skeletal press printing - j

It's been my goal for some time now to practice living gratefully on a daily basis. Thus it seemed natural that I'd want to decide whether or not there's anything to be grateful for in the first place. Life is gifted one, perhaps one has little say in the matter––even though some argue that it's only those with the strongest desire to live that are birthed. Yet at any point in life one could choose to jump off a skyscraper, or something, and paint the pavements with one’s guts. Yet many of us do not off ourselves. In fact, many of us don't even want to die! Perhaps one reason why many of us decide to keep living is because something in us comprehend life to be priceless. Thus we live because we desire life which is love and because we appeal to love which is entwined with life. In other words, life springs from love and at same time love is life. This is what the luck project entails: an experiment on the theory that one is love and learning to come to terms with,

Well, someone must stand up for wrinkled clothes! And I have volunteered, too willingly, to be that very person. But this shoot is not about the waves that texturize clothes, it is a tribute to the wrinkles that attempt to trace the pulse of our lives, and that breathless exit we call death.  And yet this shoot is just another way of stilling, in act, a chant that has been ringing my being for days now. It goes like this:  Please GIVE me your kindest N! and GIVE me your sweetest A! please GIVE me your courageous N! and GIVE me your most beautiful A! AND WHAT SPELLS?! N A N A!!!!   I love you woman, and you know it is the sort of love that even death cannot woo breath from. You were and are a glorious BLAST! - A

Cowards die many times before their deaths;  The valiant never taste death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end Will come when it will come. --William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar I was made to memorize the above poem when I was in the sixth grade. As a class, we recited it every morning. This is the only poem I know by heart (with a forgotten word here and there). I am not afraid of my dying or that of my loved ones. I think death a devastating blessing. It is, after all, the only certainty for all living beings.  As suggested by the poem above, I was brought up in an environment which sort of prepared one to face death heads-on. Every Ghanaian knows that no one goes to a funeral to cry !  I mean yes, we shed tears but the majority of the time is spent eating, dancing, and catching up with all those extended family members one has not seen since so-and-so died. For

Death as Death by  Laura Riding To conceive death as death Is difficulty come by easily, A blankness fallen among  Images of understanding, Death like a quick cold hand  On the hot slow head of suicide.  So it is come by easily For one instant. Then again furnaces Roar in the ears, then again hell revolves,  And the elastic eye holds paradise At visible length from blindness, And dazedly the body echoes ‘Like this, like this, like nothing else.' Like nothing––a similarity Without resemblance. The prophetic eye,  Closing upon difficulty, Opens upon comparison, Halving the actuality As a gift too plain, for which Gratitude has no language, Foresight no vision. ---

For Nana -- Jane

So Long for Nana my feelings spell you as peace in dazzling happiness  awaiting in merriment in foreverandeverandeverandever so soon is where  we laugh without barricades in love our fingers entwined againagainagain --- Akweley